HIMI 2007-07-22 Volume 1

Part I: Design and Evaluation Methods and Techniques

Frameworks and patterns on integrating usability activities into
organizational work practices have been developed during the last years.
However, usability and user-centered design activities remain fairly unknown to
small-sized software development organizations. Empirical research on
initiating usability activities in such organizational contexts is also limited
to few cases. We present a case project in which our usability research team
had six months to provide a small-sized software company with knowledge on how
to improve usability of one of their products. Our approach is based on
patterns of integration, on a selection of user-centered methods and on
producing tailored usability artefacts.

This paper describes psychophysical experiments which were conducted to
evaluate the influence of haptic information on visual perception of
three-dimensional (3D) interpretation of an object's shape in virtual
environment. In particular, we investigated whether haptic information provided
by a force-feedback device contributes to 3D interpretation of ambiguous visual
patterns, which causes spontaneous alternations of bi-stable 3D percepts. The
subjects' task was to report by pressing a key which 3D shape was perceived
when they were touching the virtual haptic cube along a pre-defined trajectory
on the cubic surface. To examine haptic influence on the bi-stable percepts,
the duration of each percept was recorded. The results indicate that haptic
information of the surface shape can impose a dynamic constraint on visual
computation of 3D shapes. The evaluation methods and results could be used for
developing human-machine interfaces that provide more natural and realistic
sensation of 3D objects in the future.

Aporia is a Greek word meaning helplessness or difficulty in dealing with,
or finding out about, something. This investigation is aimed at determining the
aporia existing in the present maps with satellite and traditional pictures.
Moreover, we present a quality metric called antinomy, to eradicate the aporia
in the design of interactive systems with cartographic contents. The present
quality metrics can be applied to the digital maps. The importance of
traditional iconography is also stressed in the maps and the need to carry out
heuristic assessments before using a new iconography. We need to increase the
quality in hypermedia systems, communicability and efficiency of the digital
maps, quite aside from location, the multimedia technological support used in
the presentation of the cartographic information into computers, palms, mobile
phones, etc., and potential users of the interactive systems.

An overview of how a model based specification approach can be used in the
domain of automotive human machine interface (HMI) development is presented.
The common paper based specification approach is compared to a model based,
tool supported process. Requirements from different stakeholders for such an
approach are outlined. Intended audiences are all stakeholders involved in the
creation of graphical user interfaces ranging from design, usability
engineering, and prototyping to specification and final product realization.

This paper reviews research in both information content and perceived
informativeness in the literature, and examines the causal effect of two
information content factors on perceived informativeness. A 2x2 factorial
design was adopted in an experiment involving a hypothetical online retailer.
Results from 120 surveys collected show strong support of the two hypotheses in
the expected direction, i.e., both price and quality information had a
significantly positive effect on perceived informativeness. Data also indicate
that perceived informativeness is a significant predictor of visitor attitude
toward the site and visitor intention to revisit.

Keywords: informativeness; content analysis; attitude toward a site

Understanding Requirements of Ubiquitous Application in Context of Daily
Life

Progress of ubiquitous computing oriented ICT promotes development of
information appliances with various functions. In spite of the progress, most
of user cannot receive the benefit of them. In this paper as the reason of it,
the problems related to increasing enormous amount of information contents were
discussed. Based on the problems, there are new challenges for designing user
experiences; interactions with vast amount of information contents and
integrations ubiquitous computing applications into daily life. Analyzing these
challenges from view of human-centered design could derive the necessity to
services design based on ubiquitous technologies and validation of them.

In a ubiquitous society, it is possible to use many kinds of information
anytime, anywhere. Increasingly reliant on their mobile phones and PDAs, people
often use information in public spaces. However, there are risks to entering
highly confidential information such as personal data into a system. People
have a strong awareness about the value placed on personal information, and
worry about their information being leaked to people they don't want to see it.
In public spaces people also worry about real-world leakage (i.e. by
non-digital means). In spite of the security provided by law and technology,
people cannot handle information with reassurance. Complete security means both
communication security and physical security. The purpose of this research is
to construct an environment where ubiquitous services can be used with
reassurance. In this paper we describe our first experiment in this research
area.

Keywords: Personal Space; Reassurance; Public Space

Suggestion of Methods for Understanding User's Emotional Changes While Using
a Product

The aim of this research is to suggest a most effective method for measuring
user's emotions expressed while using a product. This study developed a tool
that effectively measures the user's emotions expressed while using a product
and that can complement the limitations of the psychological measuring method.
The developed emotion logging software named VideoTAME, basically asks the
subject to watch a recorded video clip of the user performing a specific task
and to examine the emotional changes that had occurred. And a physiological
measurement method that measures the user's emotions expressed during product
use with VideoTAME and that is easily accessible in the design field was
suggested. By upgrading VideoTAME and overcoming its limitations as a
psychological measurement method, and also by using the physiological
measurement method mentioned this study to measure the user's emotional
changes, the correlation between the product usability and the user's emotion
will be able to be defined more clearly.

This paper was focused on the next generation of ubiquitous services by
using ubiquitous networks and devices. This paper was especially focused on the
transmission services of feelings to others. In the paper, some conventional
transmission services of feelings were introduced and a few of the unconscious
transmission services of feelings to both specific targets and multiple targets
were pointed out. The paper proposed two examples of the new services that
would enable the users to transmit their feelings unconsciously to others by
using ubiquitous networks and devices. These services were proposed through the
PRESPE (Participatory Requirements Elicitation using Scenarios and Photo
Essays) approach and called respectively the "aura transmission system" and
"back scratcher system". Further discussion about the usefulness and possible
negative influences on human nature or society by the new services was done,
and the future research efforts of these services were described.

Keywords: ubiquitous services; transmission of feelings

Do Beliefs About Hospital Technologies Predict Nurses' Perceptions of Their
Ability to Provide Quality Care? A Study in Two Pediatric Hospitals

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that nurse perceptions
of technology they use in practice would affect their perception that they were
able to provide high quality patient care. A survey assessing the variables was
administered to 337 pediatric nurses from two academic freestanding pediatric
hospitals in the US. Two separate equations were constructed, one to test
whether technology perceptions affected individual quality of care and the
other to test whether technology perceptions affected quality of care provided
by the nursing unit. Nurse confidence in their ability to use hospital
technology and their beliefs that the technologies were easy to use, useful,
and fit their tasks are important predictors of nurse beliefs that they are
able to provide quality care to their patients.

We are developing an intuitive information design that can increase the
user's feeling of reassurance and security when handling private information in
public space. We conducted an experiment to collect user responses to displays
providing awareness of the activity behind them while they handled private
information. Two approaches were examined: a simple two-color LED array and a
mirror. The former yielded less distraction and faster response speeds while
the latter was more intuitive and offered more reassurance.

The purpose of this research is to establish a design methodology for
collaborative systems (artifacts for collaboration), which utilizes one of the
social analyses called Ethnomethodology. So far, the author proposed
guidelines, principles, and a model as components of the design methodology
based on examples of collaborative assembly of an everyday product and remote
instruction, which uses a movable laser pointer. This paper proposes a simple
way to adapt previous results: it is the design matrix which can be used in the
requirement acquisition phase, the design phase and the evaluation phase. The
matrix supported its usefulness in the collaborative system development.

It is well recognized that the evaluation of the expert systems is very
important and difficult. This paper relates to the important issue of Expert
System evaluation. A methodology for addressing the problem is presented. As
evaluation model is proposed with the following main criteria: Usability;
impact of the system in the behaviour and decisions of the user; Impact of the
quality of the information provided to the user; financial impact; usefulness.

In this paper we detail a number of recommendations regarding how to
evaluate interfaces to systems providing public access to environmental data
and information. The primary focus is based upon web and Internet-based
interfaces. These recommendations will assist data providers and information
managers to evaluate the effectiveness of their current data access interfaces.
The paper also outlines some guidelines on how to ensure these software
interfaces are accessible to all citizens.

Whilst much effort is being invested into the design of human-computer
interfaces that provide users with access to large amounts of information,
there is less understanding of how human performance can be optimized in such
interaction-driven contexts. We suggest one way to improve performance is to
tailor the structure of the interface to the adaptive nature of cognition and
orient behavior towards certain strategies, and away from others. Here, we show
how small changes in Information Access Cost (IAC) -- the time, physical and
mental cost of accessing information -- can effect powerful changes in
cognitive processing strategies that subsequently affect performance.
Increasing IAC on task-critical information was generally shown to encourage a
more 'memory-intensive' processing strategy. This strategy not only improved
future memory for task-relevant information, but also improved learning during
problem solving, and planning. Implications for display designers in HCI are
discussed.

An evaluation method of detection probability has been proposed by the
authors for the measurement and evaluation of the industrial products based on
the human performance by perception. As a practical application, the
distributed parameters of psychometric curve were estimated by the experimental
data concerning the three kinds of attribute of size, flatness degree and
grayscale. As an example of experiments in the proposed methods, single
madality and multiple dodalities sensory tests are applied to measure the
perception performance of panels concerning the three attributes of FRP (fiber
reinforced plastics) product.

The limited screen space in small technical devices imposes considerable
usability challenges. On the one hand objects displayed on small screens should
be big enough to be hit successfully, but also small enough to house several
objects on the screen at the same time. However, findings up to now show that
single pointing is more effective in a large display compared to a smaller
display. In the present experiment this was also confirmed for an applied
multidirectional serial pointing task. Especially in more difficult tasks,
results point at a shift of the speed-accuracy tradeoff. In large displays a
fast and comparably accurate execution is chosen in contrast to a very
inaccurate and time-consuming style in small displays. From an ergonomic point
of view the outcomes recommend an optimized balance of task difficulty and
display size in small screen devices.

Popular online services, such as Amazon.com, provide recommendations for
users by using other users' rating scores for items. In this study, we describe
three types of rating systems: score-rated, count-rated, and digital-rated. We
hypothesize that digital-rated systems provide the most useful recommendations.
Then we analyze the differences in the results of the rating when the
granularity of the score changes. Finally, we visualize users by developing a
2-D visualization system that uses a multi-dimensional scaling method.

Based on the ongoing development of a portal intended for use during the
upcoming Olympics event in 2008, the portal's main purpose is to allow
volunteers, spectators, or any other participants of the Beijing Olympics to
upload self-directed video clips and relevant advertisement clips associated
with the event to the portal. Previous work has found dissimilar experiences in
interacting with the portal -- thus the need to use collaborative scenario
building as part of the design process of the portal. The paper introduces the
main purposes of the portal, and demonstrates how the intended outcomes of the
portal and dialogues generated lead to the need for participatory design. The
sessions building collaborative scenarios are also discussed, demonstrating how
they can be used to guide stakeholder participation. Lessons learnt from the
design exercise are discussed as a concluding note to the paper.

A Case Study on Effective Application of Inquiry Methods to Find Out Mobile
Phone's New Function

Recently, as the user-centered design has appeared to production design area
as an important management philosophy, there has been various trials to reflect
the user's needs in production in many aspects. However there are various kinds
of related inquiry methods and each method has different characters according
to the data traits, the participant's condition of inquiry, and the
participant's number in needing inquiry. So it is very important to choose
appropriate method fits in the inquiry purpose and the proceeding situation so
that these inquiry methods are applied to mobile phone domain. Thereafter this
study addresses the simple cases of nine inquiry methods which were applied for
the purpose of finding out mobile phone needs/ new function, and then describes
the result of this research as the following subjects. What significant data
does each method have contrasted with the others? What methods can make out
synergy effect when they match together? What methods can be omitted and are
necessary to extract variable data from participants according to the purpose
of inquiry?

Keywords: contextual design; mobile; user experience; latent need

An Experimental Examination of Customer Preferences on User Interface Design
of Mobile Services

Designing mobile services is fundamentally different from designing online
services. Not only are there differences in underlying technologies, but also
in the way people use the services. If these differences are not taken into
account, mobile services are likely to fail. However, it is quite difficult to
provide a single-layered user interface in a small screen. This study aims at
examining how design attributes of user interfaces of mobile services affect
customer preferences. In order to explore customer preferences to each design
attribute of mobile services, we measure and analyze customer's WTP
(Willingness To Pay) toward their different interface designs. Ultimately,
throughout the study, we try to answer how to design mobile services in small
screen of mobile devices. In addition, we propose an optimal design solution
that customers likely prefer.

In human-human communications, especially in face-to-face communication,
sub-verbal and non-verbal messages have more importance than messages
transported by words. On the other hand, in traditional man-machine interfaces,
machines only understand pre-defined operations, and never understand
operators' sub-verbal and non-verbal messages. This causes some usability
problems in machine operations. We have proposed elsewhere that Grasping
Information Interface Concept (GIIC) is the key idea to alleviate the
above-mentioned communication gap between man and machine, and this paper
verifies GIIC experimentally. GIIC regards grasping-and-moving as a fundamental
hand operation necessary for performing tasks using modern man-machine
interfaces, and behavioral measures associated with grasping, such as force,
posture, etc., should have much potential in developing task-adaptive and
operator-adaptive interfaces because it is known that how people grasp devices
is dependent on the purpose of these tasks. GIIC provides machines with a
communication channel to understand operators' intents more through the
grasping information.

The accessibility of information on web-space is considered to be focused on
the properties of hyperlinks. Although the reasons to put in a hyperlink are
multifarious, only one kind of link exists in HTML structure. As a result of
this, users have to search for links by using syntactically techniques so as to
retrieve information in web-space. In this paper, four kinds of hyper links are
introduced into HTML, in order to improve the accessibility of information in
web-space: External links, Internal links, Navigation links and Intra-unit
links. Designers and users can share the image of the link target page by using
these kinds of links.

Implementing the HCD Method into the Developing Process of a CPD System

This paper aims to investigate collaborative product development activities
and highlights the importance of human perspectives for developing a
collaborative product development (CPD) system. For CPD systems to be useful,
it is necessary to effect usable and useful interaction. Therefore, the
human-centred design (HCD) method had been implemented into the developing
process of a CPD system. The modified HCD method specifies how the activities
fit into the overall system development process. A proposed plan guides: (1)
the design process activities described, (2) procedures for integrating these
activities with other system development activities, (3) the individuals and
the organisation(s) responsible for the design activities and the range of
skills and viewpoints they provide and (4) effective procedures for
establishing feedback and communication on design activities as they affect
other design activities and methods for documenting these activities.

This paper describes the basis content of Artificial Psychology as well as
Affective Computing and Kansei Engineering and other technology that are
correlated with the research. Also it reviews the research history of
Artificial Psychology theory and practice, and the future research direction of
the Artificial Psychology is indicated.

This paper describes a HCI system for the control of home appliance which is
focused on human friendliness. This system utilizes two USB cameras to enable a
user to select home appliance easily by hand pointing gesture. We propose two
different methods of storing the three dimensional position of home appliance
by user. Home appliance selection method and feedback for user's wrong pointing
direction are also described in this paper. Because of the low cost
installation, simple operation and interactive feedback, our proposed system
enhances the usability and human-friendliness.

In this paper, we present that Enterprise information systems (EIS) can be
abstracted to a scenario in which users could schedule the task suites of
controlled entities under enterprise security mechanism, and propose a novel
Entity Driven Task Software Framework (EDTSF) for EIS. Based on existing
hierarchical information system architectures, the EDTSF could clearly
implements enterprise business partition, reduces coupling between data objects
and tasks; it also increases flexibility and expansibility of the EIS by
expanding service function of data object and reusing the scheduling mechanism
at system level. We have noticed that little research has been done on the
partition rules and methods of enterprise business. The EDTSF is a new software
framework and its application results show that the EDTSF is an effective
approach to analyzing, designing and implementing EIS.

Technology roadmaps are often referred for better decision making by HCI
professionals who connect human factors with product development and
innovation. We conducted user study that explore information seeking and
tracing behaviors in using technology roadmap. The research revealed that HCI
professionals exhibit distinctive patterns in using technology roadmap,
depending on their expertise in technical knowledge and work experience.
Finally, we designed new user interface of an interactive technology roadmap
system based on the research findings. We demonstrated its usefulness in
seeking task-dependent information, intuitiveness in information visualization,
and easiness to use as a reference for technologies.

Part II: Visualising Information

A large number of the world's cultural heritage sites and landscapes have
been lost over time due to the progress of urbanization. Digital archive
projects that digitize these landscapes as virtual 3D worlds have become more
popular. Although a large numbers of studies have been made on reconstructing
3D virtual worlds, the previous methods have been insufficient, because they
require significant effort. In this study, we propose a new method of
reconstructing a 3D virtual world only from photo images that requires little
intervention. The idea is to reduce the learning curve of the software need and
automate the method as much as possible so that we can digitize as many
heritage sites as needed. In our approach, we first reconstruct 3D models from
single 2D photos using an image based modeling and rendering (IBMR) technique.
After reconstructing models from all the available photos, we connect the 3D
models into one unified 3D virtual world. Specifically, we implemented a
seamless connection algorithm that supports free viewpoint translation. And we
demonstrated the reconstruction of part of a cultural heritage site based on
our system.

Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is an active research domain. Due to
the number of large databases, various data mining methods were developed.
Those tools can generate a large amount of knowledge that needs more advanced
tools to be explored. We focus on association rules mining such as "If
Antecedent then Conclusion" and more particularly on rules visualization during
the post processing stage in order to help expert's analysis. An association
rule is mainly calculated depending on two user-specified metrics: support and
confidence. All current representations present a common limitation which is
effective on small data quantities. We introduced a new interactive approach
which combines both a global representation (2D matrix) and a detailed
representation (Fisheyes view) in order to display large sets of association
rules.

Development of intuitive visualizations requires a systematic approach that
includes a focus on the user. Creating interactive visualizations for complex
systems often requires the integration of information from existing systems and
sensor data to provide the operator with real-time information. The objective
of this research was to fuse information from sensor technology with flightline
maintenance information to support aircraft maintenance logistics. The research
was conducted in two phases. A user-centered approach was used to design
visualizations in each phase; however, in Phase II a cluster analysis technique
was utilized to support the design. User feedback indicated that incorporating
a technique to map data and decisions resulted in interactive visualizations
that were well accepted by users and provided the important information needed
for their decision making tasks.

Today's desktop computers can be regarded as evolution of the typewriter.
They are well suited for office applications but far from optimal for e.g.
mechanical design, traditionally conducted on large drawing tables. Large
screens are nowadays widely available for table-like computer workplaces. But
their resolution is still too poor. To overcome this drawback the
"fovea-approach" has been developed. A slim tablet PC (the so called
Fovea-Tablett®) can be put deliberately on top of a large table screen. The
position of the tablet in relation to the table screen is tracked and the
screen content of the table display just below the tablet is displayed on the
Fovea-Tablett®: just as if one would look through the tablet onto the table
but with higher resolution. Whereas the table display is still good for
overview, the Fovea-Tablett® brings highest resolution to the region, one
is just focusing on.

In this paper we describe a first version of ZEUS, a web application that
combines browsing, searching and object presentation. With the zooming and
panning based navigation concept of ZEUS and a hierarchical organization of the
information space we try to solve the problems of information overload. It has
to be evaluated if categorization, zooming and a full text search can minimize
that the user gets lost in hyperspace. The concept of ZEUS is based on some
thesis about human cognition, navigation and exploration which we hope to prove
with evaluation and user testing of our application in the future.

The aim of this research is to suggest folksonomy-based collaborative
tagging system for supporting designers in group who interpret visualized
information such as images through grouping, labeling and classifying for
design inspiration. We performed field observation and preliminary studies to
examine how designers interpret visualized information in group work. We found
that traditional classification methods have some problems like lack of surface
and time consuming. Based on this research, we developed PC based group work
application, named I-VIDI. By implementing I-VIDI based on functional
requirements, we have showed how I-VIDI reduces problems found from current
image classification methods such as KJ clustering and MDS. In future case
study, we plan to conduct extensive user research to evaluate the system
further as well as adding more functions which can be usefully applied to
collaborative design work.

The development of an in-store sales support system that focuses on the
"virtual try-on" of clothing is the aim of the research project "IntExMa".
Based on sophisticated virtual reality technology, the interactive system
provides visualization of made-to-measure shirts in combination with digital
customer counterparts. The system is intended for seamless integration into
existing processes at the point-of-sale and for the support of the
collaborative consultation process between salesperson and customer. This paper
describes the various system parts stemming from different research disciplines
and their integration under the goal of high usability in an everyday setting.

Keeping sight of the enterprise's workforce strengthens the entire business
by helping to avoid poor decision-making and lowering the risk of failure in
problem-solving. It is critical for large-scale, global enterprises to have
capabilities to quickly identify subject matter experts (SMEs) to staff teams
or to resolve domain-specific problems. This requires timely understanding of
the kinds of experience and expertise of the people in the firm for any given
set of skills. Fortunately, a large portion of the information that is needed
to identify SMEs and knowledge communities is embedded in many structured and
unstructured data sources. Mining and understanding this information requires
non-linear processes to interact with automated tools; along with
visualizations of different interrelated data to enable exploration and
discovery. This paper describes a visualization solution coupled with an
interactive information analytics technique to facilitate the discovery and
identification of workforce experience and knowledge community capacity.

Scientists in the data mining field are constantly faced with the challenge
of finding useful information from a huge amount of information. We have to
analyze the data until we can get the appropriate information. We have to
select one part of the data, compare them against each other, or arrange them
in certain order. This approach is also known the trial and error approach. A
trial and error approach requires the users' judgment, for example, to
correctly set certain parameters; it is an approach that place importance not
only to the end result, but also to the process in achieving the end result. In
this paper, we propose visualization methods to visualize past working history
for supporting trial and error approach in data mining. We use our methods to
visualize web browsing logs and data browsing logs in genome science fields.

Despite the burgeoning interest shown in visualizations by diverse
disciplines, there yet remains the unresolved question concerning
comprehension. Is the concept that is being communicated through the visual
easily grasped and clearly interpreted? Given the vast variety of users and
their visualization goals, it is difficult for one to decide on the
effectiveness of different visualization tools/ techniques in a context
independent fashion. To capture the true gains of visualizations, we need a
systematic framework that can effectively tell us about actual quantifiable
benefits of these visual representations to the intended audience. In this
paper, we present our research methodology to establish a metrics-based
framework for comprehension measurement in the domain of software visualization
systems. We also propose an innovative way of evaluating a visualization
technique by encapsulating it in a visualization pattern where it is seen as a
solution to the visualization problem in a specific context.

TreeMap is one a common space-filling visualization technique to display
large hierarchies in a limited display space. In TreeMaps, highlighting
techniques are widely used to depict search results from visual queries. To
improve visualizing the queries results in the TreeMap, we designed a
continuous animated multi-distortion algorithm based on fisheye and continuous
zooming techniques. To evaluate the effectiveness of the new algorithm, we
conducted an experiment to compare the distortion technique to the traditional
highlighting methods used in TreeMaps. The results suggest that the
multi-distortion technique is only effective with small result sets but not as
effective as simple highlighting for large search result sets.

Scroll bar is one of the most frequently used components of graphical user
interfaces (GUIs). It is generally considered to provide overview + detail
functionality. The scale ratio of a scroll bar refers to the rate of the
document dimension to the proportion being displayed. It is usually determined
by the length of the document and the height of the display window if
considering the case of a vertical scrollbar. The user has no direct control to
the scale ratio through the scroll bar, which is inconvenient when dealing with
long documents in overview and navigation tasks. This inconvenience is more
prominent for small display devices. This paper presents a novel GUI component,
ActiveScrollbar, that enhances the standard scroll bar by providing direct
scale ratio control without consuming more screen space. This component was
expected to be more useful in hand held devices.

This paper proposes a system that automatically deforms the images
transmitted in both directions so as to achieve two goals: easing the concerns
of users and ensuring well enough support. We examine here the effect of visual
information quality on the effectiveness and impression of collaboration
between a novice user and an operator.

Poor data quality (DQ) has been a troubling issue within many organizations.
Thus it is important for a decision-maker to be aware of the data quality of
the information based on which he/she makes a decision. However, the mental
integration of DQ metadata in to a decision process poses a significant
cognitive challenge. A decision-maker could be overloaded and may not
effectively take advantage of the DQ metadata [2]. This paper thus proposes a
visualization approach to reduce the amount of cognitive resource required for
such mental integration.

Keywords: Information visualization; data quality data

Part III: Retrieval, Searching, Browsing and Navigation

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is all about the way in which people
interact with computer systems. This paper focuses on the cognitive aspects of
HCI when a user is searching for information, so as to facilitate effective
user interactions with vast amounts of available information. Search engines
provide a 'one-size-fits-all' model, which do not adequately cater to the
differing needs of searchers at different points in time (continuously changing
situations in time/space, as per sense-making theory). We posit that from a
system designer's point of view, capturing the 'user ability to specify his
information need' will help operationalize task/searcher characteristics (hence
the user need) and help the designer provide better interfaces for search that
fit the needs of the user and lead to search efficacy and searcher
satisfaction. The study should advance HCI for search through greater
understanding of user needs, enhance search interfaces and lead to theory
development.

We propose an image gathering and display method for efficient browsing of
surveillance camera images. The proposed method requires large cost to inspect
lengthy image sequences taken by a surveillance camera. The proposed method
involves generating a still image by gathering the moving parts from image
sequences captured by a fixed camera. The gathered images are generated for
several intervals of time and are displayed hierarchically. A user can easily
browse the scene by observing the images with moving parts. Since detection and
recognition of the target objects are performed by a human operator, efficient
and reliable browsing can be established.

The previous study [9], [10] showed the fuzzy Bayes model successfully
predicted print defects with a 50% hit rate at the first top prediction and an
80% hit rate within the top five predictions. However, the previous study was
limited to English. In this study, Korean and English descriptions in
predicting print defects by Korean subjects were evaluated based on fuzzy Bayes
models. For the study, Korean descriptions were collected in Korea, and Bayes
models were developed and evaluated. The result shows that Korean subjects much
more accurately predicted print defects when they used Korean descriptions than
English descriptions. Afterwards, English descriptions by US subjects will be
collected, and both Korean and English lexicon data will be compared. Finally,
the study will investigate a Korean-English cross language diagnosis (Q-KE-CLD)
system to identify print defects based on the fuzzy Bayes model.

Search engines and metasearch engines on the World Wide Web typically
display representative information such as the result document titles and
snippets in a one-dimensional ranked list. Alternatively, a few others such as
Clusty and Kartoo cluster their results so that users can, to a certain extent,
interact with documents, keywords and/or clusters. The number of documents that
can be effectively presented in one screen is usually limited to between 10 and
20. In this paper, we propose a method based on treemap visualization that
substantially improve the information compactness. In addition, it provides a
few unique post-search interaction methods that enable a user to manage a large
number of results. An online prototype system is built. Various experiments are
designed and done to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness and usability.

Keywords: Information visualization; web search interface

Development of an Approach for Optimizing the Accuracy of Classifying Claims
Narratives Using a Machine Learning Tool (TEXTMINER[4])

This paper demonstrates a successful application of a Fuzzy Bayes
machine-learning tool for classifying large amounts of narrative text,
involving the use of ROC curves to identify optimum prediction threshold values
at which to filter predictions for manual review. Different thresholds were
used for different categories to optimize results and effectively minimize
resources necessary for manual coding of a large number of claims narratives
randomly extracted from a large U.S. insurer. The results indicated that
utilizing a computer approach with strategic assignment of manual narratives
filtered out approximately 15% of the narratives for manual review and resulted
in a final accuracy at the two-digit classification level of 81%.

We discuss the interface of VISTO, a Content Based Image Retrieval system
for vector images in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format. The system includes
different engines and one common graphical interface. In fact, to support the
different requirements of different application domains, the system offers a
variety of engines. Most notably, due to its modular architecture, the system
allows users to add engines at runtime; the interface provides support for
newly added engines, including parameter tuning. The interface is designed for
two classes of users: application domain users and researchers in the field of
multimedia. Application domain users can use both query-by-sketch and
query-by-example to search collections; researcher users can test, tune, and
compare engines, and they can design datasets to be used in batch mode. VISTO
is an open source project developed in Java; it uses advanced features of the
language, such as the Core Reflection API, to dynamically adapt the interface
to the available engines. The system is being validated in different
application domains, including the production of 2D animation, the Sign Writing
Language, and the BLISS Language.

Current systems force users to store their documents in hierarchic file
systems. However, users remember their documents not in terms of ad-hoc
categories, but of their contents, why they were written, etc. Describing
documents using such autobiographic information would be a simpler and more
effective way for users to retrieve them. Furthermore, we found that users
mention printed versions of documents when retrieving them. However, current
systems don't regard the printed and electronic versions of a document as
facets of the same entity. To solve these problems we developed an interface
that allows users to browse their autobiographic information, gathered by a
special-purpose monitoring subsystem, to retrieve their documents. We bridged
the gap between the real and electronic worlds by maintaining the association
between paper and electronic documents resorting to RFID technology. Tests show
our interface allows users to efficiently retrieve their documents.

This paper proposes a new video digest and delivery system, "ChocoParaTV",
for applications such as blogs that include video content, and CGM sites. The
video digests are generated based on automatic extraction of emphasized speech
portions. To deliver the digest information and the digest to audiences, we
also propose a new video digest description: CH-RSS; it can generate digested
contents dynamically to match the user's requested digest time. With the
ChocoParaTV browser, the users first view the digest and then visit the
original web site if they want to watch the original content. The effectiveness
of the proposed system was confirmed by a field experiment; about 40% of the
users accessed the original web sites through the ChocoParaTV browser digests.
This indicates that our method is very effective in making video content
attractive to the audience.

Semantic Text Portion (STP) is a text portion in the original page which is
semantically related to the anchor pointing to the target page. STPs may
include the facts and the people's opinions about the target pages. STPs can be
used for various upper-level applications such as automatic summarization and
document categorization. In this paper, we concentrate on extracting STPs. We
conduct a survey of STP to see the positions of STPs in original pages and find
out HTML tags which can divide STPs from the other text portions in original
pages. We then develop a method for extracting STPs based on the result of the
survey. The experimental results show that our method achieves high
performance.

Ontology is widely used in the areas of knowledge engineering, web based
data mining, etc. In rough set theory, accuracy of approximation of set and a
concept of granularity are introduced. Rough set theory is very useful to
define dependency among attributes and extract decision rules from the set. One
of our main aims of this paper is to propose a concept of rough ontology. A
concept of rough ontology is extended concept of rough set, and it enables us
to use flexible information system in the form of ontology. And rough ontology
is useful to introduce concepts rough set theory in to ontology. In this paper
we formulate a concept of rough ontology, which is extended concept of rough
set theory. We define upper and lower approximation, accuracy of approximation
of preference, concept of granularity of preference. And we also show the
property of rough ontology.

For an advanced next-generation Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) interface,
combining natural language processing (NLP) is an inevitable choice as human
language is the most common and sophisticated communication device. Among
various topics in NLP, word sense related topic is one of the most challenging
areas. In this paper we present a method adopted from ACOM that automatically
generate bilingual lexicon using aligned parallel corpus. The results of the
test on the predefined test set for the English and French Bibles show the
method correctly produce target words with 70% correct ratio. Besides, the
proposed method generates target words that reflect contextual relationship
between source and target words such as garrison and Philistins.

This study proposes a keyword search technique to reduce the traffic caused
when applying Distributed Hash Table (DHT) base P2P systems as middleware for
ubiquitous computing application in order to ensure effective search in Mobile
Ad-hoc Network (MANET). For query with many keywords, nodes should be visited
as much as the number of keywords and many posting files (inverted list) should
be sent to the next node and these posting files bring about traffic. To solve
this problem firstly the size of inverted list nothing to do with search result
was diminished using distance of the hash values obtained by hashing keywords
within document; secondly the positive false rate of bloom filter can be
lowered since the size of posting file to be hashed can be reduced through
distance-based bloom filter technique and by doing this the size of inverted
list to be sent can be reduced as well. This technique is based on Plaxton's
approach and the proposed technique was evaluated through a series of tests.

Integrated Physically Based Manipulation and Decision-Making Tree for
Navigation to Support Design Rationale

We explore the idea of integrated physically based manipulation and
decision-making tree for navigation to support design rationale. It introduces
a way to support user participation. This paper also proposes and validates a
framework which combines several techniques to aid user to make decisions. We
hope this research can assist untrained users to quickly feel comfortable and
satisfied for a computer aid system by rational way. This paper focuses on a
system prototype for the client customization process in apartment plan design
to exemplify our concepts.

This study uncovered critical domains and themes of compliments and
complaints that influence consumers overall satisfaction with using virtual
travel agencies. Four domains, namely, "customer Service & Support", "trip
schedule change", "product experience" and "firm credibility" were identified
as areas where problems arose and extreme dissatisfaction resulted. Three
domains emerged as the best predictors for satisfaction: "product experience",
Customer Service & Specially at managerial level is critical for these
virtual travel firms. The outcomes of this research lend insights into how to
effectively manage consumer online reviews and turn this domain of valuable
resources into knowledge and a strategy tool for the virtual travel segment of
the hospitality and tourism industry.

This paper summarizes improvements to an earlier developed Fuzzy Bayes
approach for assigning coding categories to injury narratives randomly
extracted from a large U.S. insurer. Improvements to the model included: adding
sequenced words as predictors and removing common subsets prior to calculation
of word strengths. Removing subsets and adding word sequences improved
prediction strengths for sequences found frequently in the training dataset,
and resulted in more intuitive predictions and increased prediction strengths.
Improved accuracy was found for several categories that had proved difficult to
code in the past. This study also examined the effectiveness of a two-tiered
approach, in which narratives were first categorized at the broad level (such
as [falls]), before classification at a more refined level (such as [falls from
heights].) The overall sensitivity following a two-tiered approach was 79% for
predicting classifications at the broad category level and 66% for the more
refined prediction categories.

Retrieval systems have become one of the most used categories of computer
tools. Yet the interfaces of modern information retrieval systems fail to
address the correlation between the user's context and her information need.
Furthermore, they usually do not integrate methods that allow whole communities
or groups of users to profit of single retrieval instances. In this paper, we
present our vision of an innovative, collaborative information retrieval and
presentation approach based on the human factors balance model. Our approach
combines automatic natural language processing results with handcrafted
knowledge models and integrates implicit retrieval based on intelligent
document segmentation and presentation, providing users with contextually
relevant information.

This study compared the accuracy of three Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)
based models developed for classifying injury narratives. Two SVD-Bayesian
models and one SVD-Regression model were developed to classify bodies of free
text. Injury narratives and corresponding E-codes assigned by human experts
from the 1997 and 1998 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) were used on
all three models. Using the E-code categories assigned by experts as the basis
for comparison all methods were compared. Further experiments showed that the
performance of the equidistant Bayes model and regression model improved as
more SVD vectors were used for the input. The regression model was compared to
a fuzzy Bayes model. It was concluded that all three models are capable of
learning from human experts to accurately categorize cause-of-injury codes from
injury narratives, with the regression-based model being the strongest, while
all were dominated by multiple-word fuzzy Bayes model.

When a person requests, for example, "I want to see a bright and exciting
movie," the words "bright" and "exciting" are called Kansei keywords. With a
retrieval system to retrieve recommended movies using these Kansei keywords, a
viewer will be able to select movies that fit the Kansei without actually
having to view samples or previews of the movies. The purpose of this research
is to clarify a method to construct a support system capable of selecting
movies that fit the viewer's Kansei, and to verify the effectiveness of this
method based on Kansei engineering, for the selection of recommended movies. To
accomplish this, we extract the features of a movie using factor factor
analysis from data from a Semantic Differential Gauge questionnaire, then link
the viewer's Kansei with the features using multiple linear regression
analysis. After constructing a prototype system to verify the effectiveness,
ten examinees viewed a movie selected by the prototype system. "The selected
movie fit the Kansei" at a level of about 70 percent.

List is a simple and useful graphical user interface (GUI) component for
organizing linearly structured information when it contains only a few
elements. However long lists are difficult to use because only a small part of
the list is shown each time, to gain an overview or select elements from a long
list the user usually needs to scroll the list many times. This problem becomes
more serious as the list gets longer. This paper presents a novel solution,
LensList, by applying the focus and context technique to the view of a list.
LensList dynamically changes the elements to bigger sizes to form a focal area
around the mouse cursor while keeping the elements in the peripheral area in
smaller sizes as context. This enables it to display a longer list within the
same screen area. Therefore it can be more efficient for performing browsing
and navigation tasks.

It is efficient that free text interface is implemented in medical record
when Health Care Workers (HCWs) want to write patient detail information.
However contents of free text are not be able to evaluate easily. If we
evaluate free text, we can use various natural language technique. Especially,
knowledge of human recognition to free text is very useful, and we can
construct a model of writing medical document. Concretely, this knowledge is
"Context based Structure (CBS)" based on Diagnostic-Therapeutic cycle. On this
time, we analyzed actual medical document (Incident / Accident Report in
hospital) using this CBS and we made navigate system that was able to display
something HCWs should write about according to judge contents.

Video retrieval continues to be one of the most exciting research areas in
the field of multimedia technology. With the advancement of sensing and
tracking technologies it is possible to generate multiple personal video
streams during events from different perspectives. This paper presents the
first prototype of the MyView system that provides on-demand personalized video
streams with multiple cameras and additional sensors. This system captures and
stores video streams in an indoor office, extracts high-level events from local
positioning system (LPS) tracking information, and provides on-demand video
segments for high-level queries by mixing the multi-camera video streams for a
stream of the best view.

Keywords: Event retrieval; video compositing; multi-camera

Part IV: Development Methods and Techniques

Context-Aware Information Agents for the Automotive Domain Using Bayesian
Networks

To reduce the workload of the driver due to the increasing amount of
information and functions, intelligent agents represent a promising possibility
to filter the immense data sets. The intentions of the driver can be analyzed
and tasks can be accomplished autonomously, i.e. without interference of the
user. In this contribution, different adaptive agents for the vehicle are
realized: For example, the fuel agent determines its decisions by Bayesian
Networks and rule-based interpretation of context influences and knowledge. The
measured variables which affect the driver, the system, and the environment are
analyzed. In the context of a user study the relevance of individual measured
variables was evaluated. On this data basis, the agents were developed and the
corresponding networks were trained. During the evaluation of the effectiveness
of the agents it shows that the implemented system reduces the number of
necessary interaction steps and can relieve the driver. The evaluation shows
that the intentions are interpreted to a high degree correctly.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has selected "human-machine interaction" as one
of twelve areas of technology with a particular potential for innovation and
market-relevance. The paper gives a brief overview of the goals and research
topics of the initiative.

We present a method for moving object contours detection based on
spatial-temporal characteristics. Using S-T features, the contour of moving
object can be well distinguished from background; therefore the moving objects
are detected without the need of establishing and updating background models.
The detection method can handle situations where the background of the scene
suffers from the noises due to the various facts, including the weather
condition such as snow or fog and flicker of leafs on trees, and bushes. The
algorithm estimates the probability of observing pixel as a contour pixel based
on a sample of intensity values for each pixel during a period of time and its
local gradient in current frame. The experiments show that this method is
sensitive to changes caused by moving objects and is able to avoid the
affection of complex background. The paper also shows how to separate
multi-person based on the contour detection results using template matching.
The approach runs in real-time and achieves sensitive detection.

More Recently, researchers have explored to provide a queue management
scheme with differentiated loss guarantees for the future Internet. Various
types of real time and non-real time traffic with varying requirements are
transmitted over the Internet. The sides of a packet drop rate, an each class
to differential drop probability on achieving a low delay and high traffic
intensity. Improved a queue management scheme to be enhanced to offer a drop
probability is desired necessarily. This paper considers multiple random early
detection with differential drop probability which is a slightly modified
version of the MQDDP model, to get the performance of the best suited, we
analyzes its main control parameters (maxth, minth, maxp) for
achieving the proportional loss differentiation (PLD) model, and gives their
setting guidance from the analytic approach. we propose Dynamic-multiple queue
management scheme based on differential drop probability, called Dynamic-MQDDP,
is proposed to overcome MQDDP's shortcoming as well as supports static
maxp parameter setting values for relative and each class proportional
loss differentiation. MQDDP is static according to the situation of the network
traffic, Network environment is very dynamic situation. Therefore maxp
parameter values needs to modify too to the constantly and dynamic. The
verification of the guidance is shown with figuring out loss probability using
a proposed algorithm under dynamic offered load and is also selection problem
of optimal values of parameters for high traffic intensity and show that
Dynamic-MQDDP has the better performance in terms of packet drop rate. We also
demonstrated using an ns-2 network simulation.

Converting Information Through a Complete and Minimal Unit Transcoder for
QoS Adaptation

MPEG-21's digital item adaptation technology becomes a new way for universal
multimedia access. It needs transcoder to change media resource's format and so
on according to delivery context. Then, the use of heavy transcoder with
various transcoding functions integrated into one altogether is so complicated
and difficult in supporting universal multimedia access. Unit transcoder is
useful is to resolve this question, in which a transcoder has only one
transcoding function. This requires considering how to compose a set of unit
transcoders. Thus, given a set for end-to-end different service quality pairs
according to the character of application as defined by user, this study
suggests how to compose complete unit transcoders that can always create one
and more transcoding path(s) for each pair in the set. This method has a
question of creating too many transcoding paths for each pair of end-to-end
different service quality. Thus, this study also suggests the algorithm that
generates minimum unit transcoder sets to support multimedia adaptation with
minimum unit transcoder. The algorithm suggested was implemented into
multimedia stream engine, and this paper describes the results of experiment
for this algorithm.

This paper captures our experience developing Algorithms to solve
Combinatorial Problems using different techniques. Because it is a Software
Engineering problem, then to find better ways of developing algorithms, solvers
and metaheuristics is our interest too. Here, we fixed some concepts from
Knowledge Management and Software Engineering applied in our work.

Forms are ubiquitous in today's software applications, so automation of form
generation is highly desirable. In this paper, we provide improvements on
Xforms model including data and event model. At the same time, we give a new
method using use case for automatic form-building and the transformations from
use case models to form user interfaces.

As computers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, moving from the desktop
into the infrastructure of our everyday life, they begin to influence the way
we interact with this environment -- the (physical) entities that we operate
upon in order to achieve our daily goals. The most important aspect of future
human-computer interaction therefore is the way, computers support us in
efficiently managing our personal environment. This paper addresses the
fundamental components that are involved in the forthcoming
human-computer-environment interaction.

Nowadays, one very complicated problem bothering network analysts too much
is the redundant data generated by IDS. The objective of our system SATA
(Security Alert & Threat Analysis) is trying to solve this problem. Several
novel methods using data mining technologies to reconstruct attack scenarios
were proposed to predict the next stage of attacks according to the recognition
the attackers' high level strategies. The main idea of this paper is to propose
a novel idea of mining "complicated" attack scenarios based on multi-agent
systems without the limitation of necessity of clear attack specifications and
precise rule definitions. We propose SAMP and CAST to mine frequent attack
behavior sequences and construct attack scenarios. We perform a series of
experiments to validate our method on practical attack network environments of
CERNET. The results of experiments show that our approach is valid in
multi-agent attack scenario construction and correlation analysis.

In Korea, many small and medium size companies have introduced information
system for their effective management. The Korean government have supported
them to set this system. But many of these companies failed to utilize this
system. One reason is high maintenance and customization cost. In this
research, we developed an effective methodology for constructing an information
system by themselves. And they can easily renew their system according to the
change of their business process. This methodology cannot support the internet
version, but low cost and easy to maintenance will be the strongest point to
set up an early version of information system for small size companies.

Keywords: Information system; Small organization; Excel; VBA

Visual Agent Programming (VAP): An Interactive System to Program Animated
Agents

An interactive system in which the user can program animated agents visually
is introduced: the Visual Agent Programming (VAP) software provides a GUI to
program life-like agents. VAP is superior to currently available systems to
program such agents in that it has a richer set of features including automatic
compilation, generation, commenting and formatting of code, amongst others.
Moreover, a rich error feedback system not only helps the expert programmer,
but makes the system particularly accessible to the novice user. The VAP
software package is available freely online.

The Implementation of Adaptive User Interface Migration Based on Ubiquitous
Mobile Agents

MA (Mobile Agent) is active, autonomous, and self-replicable software object
containing both computational logic and state information. One advantage of
using MA paradigm instead of conventional message passing paradigm is that it
can reduce communication traffic among the computing devices in the system.
Also, the MA paradigm supports asynchronous interaction of computing devices,
enabling more efficient system services. In order to adopt the MA paradigm into
the ubiquitous computing technologies, it is necessary to develop a lightweight
middleware platform, called MAP (Mobile Agent Platform), that supports agent
migration and install it in various devices such as PDAs, hand-held devices,
and digital appliances. In this paper, we propose our lightweight MAP, named
KAgentPlatform, that is developed based on J2ME for ubiquitous environments.
Especially, we describe our design and implementation of the KAgentPlatform,
and show the experiments of adaptive UI migration based on ubiquitous mobile
agents.

This paper describes about construction of Web application for cusp surface
analysis. Client accesses to the Web server in order to analyze the data for
cusp surface analysis, and a user's browser downloads Web page for data input
automatically. Client can be offered through Web browsers by using HTML
generated dynamically by Java Server Pages (JSP) technology, or Java applets.
Tomcat is operated as a plug-in of Apache to start the Java servlet on the
server. Tomcat is the servlet container that is used to carry out cusp for
Java. Cusp for Java is applied as Java servlet. It is a java class that extends
a J2EE-compatible Web server. Cusp for Java receives HTTP (Hypertext Transfer
Protocol) request from the browser, and provides views of result data as HTML.

In ubiquitous computing, most people need to track various sources of news
using various devices, but it becomes difficult once there are more than a
handful of sources. This is the reason for this is that users have to navigate
to each page, load it, remember how it's formatted, and find where they last
left off in the list. To solve these problems, many service providers provide
RDF Site Summary documents. In this paper, we propose a newly designed news
service using RSS and VoiceXML. RSS is an XML format that supports the
syndication of news stories and similar content. There are several different
formats for XML syndication that are referred to as RSS. Since RSS is in XML
format, turning it into VoiceXML is easy and the synergy benefits of binding
RSS and VXML are great. VoiceXML is a non-proprietary, web-based markup
language for creating vocal dialogues between humans and computers. In this
paper, we first focus on binding RSS and VXML, and RSS feed parsing. As a
result of this research, we implement enhanced real time news service. People
can use our service with their wired and wireless phone at any time, at any
place. Also, we validate usability by comparing a typical RSS service scenario
and typical VoiceXML service scenario, and calculating user's satisfaction.

Transport protocol in mobile devices of HCI (human-computer interaction)
operates at wired and wireless heterogeneous network. it is to conquer the poor
Wireless environment and a constraint mobility that have been developed from
reactive congestion control schemes to proactive congestion control schemes
suitable for the wired, wireless networks environment. in spite of, recently
proposed that TCP's proactive congestion control schemes could not reflect
network status in detail and there are a limit to support for new mobile
services of HCI users. In this paper, we outlines open issues and problems
laying stress on TCP-Jersey's available bandwidth estimators in order to reduce
using rate adjustment metrics to packet loss and congestion loss. also, we
presented the guideline of selecting more adequate metrics for improve wireless
TCP performance of mobile HCI.

This research proposes a new task analysis methodology that combines the
fuzzy Bayesian model with classic task analysis methods to develop a
semi-automated task analysis tool to better help traditional task analysts
identify subtasks. We hypothesize that this approach could help task analysts
identify activity units performed by the call center agent. The term activity
units, in our study, represent the subtasks the agents perform during a remote
troubleshooting process. We also investigate whether this tool could help
predict the activity units as well. An effort-intensive field-based data
collection for the call center's naturalistic decision making's environment was
accomplished. A human expert and an additional 18 Purdue students participated
in the validation of the assigned subtasks. The machine learning tool's
performance was then examined. The preliminary results support our hypotheses
that the fuzzy Bayesian based tool is able to learn and predict subtask
categories from the agent/customer narrative telephone conversations.

This paper discusses machine learning methods and their application to
Brain-Computer Interfacing. A particular focus is placed on linear
classification methods which can be applied in the BCI context. Finally, we
provide an overview on the Berlin-Brain Computer Interface (BBCI).

An Information Filtering Method Based on User's Moods, Situations, and
Preferences

We propose a Music Recommendation System (MRS) based on GPS information and
user's mood. The system records example automatically when user selects the
music, and extracts hypothesis by Inductive Logic Programming (ILP). Then the
system calculates recommendation rate by the hypothesis, and recommend the
music by using roulette strategy.

Keywords: Recommendation; Moods; Situation; ILP

An Adaptive Frame-Based Admission Control for Multimedia Traffic in Wireless
LAN

Improving the performance of delay-constrained video streaming over wireless
networks is one of the most important issues for various multimedia-related
applications, as well as for the efficient overall utilization of the wireless
medium. In this paper, we propose a scheme for adaptive admission control and
scheduling for frame-based multimedia traffic in the 802.11 wireless local area
networks. The conventional scheduler used for IEEE 802.11e is not suitable for
VBR traffic such as MPEG-4 because only a single fixed TXOP is allocated from
the hybrid Coordinator. In our scheme, we divide an MPEG flow into three
different classes of video-frames depending on the user-QoS, and Our scheme is
distributed admission control for each divided video-frame types and poll
scheduling adaptive admission control for the flow.

Keywords: IEEE 802.11e HCCA; Admission Control

A Network Framework on Adaptive Power Management in HCI Mobile Terminals

Our goal is to propose the optimal network model for HCI mobile terminals
with limited capacity, and to provide ubiquitous services using the minimum
cost and to prolong the system lifetime by reducing the energy consumption of
mobile devices. In order to achieve these goals, we propose an energy-efficient
routing protocol based on clustering scheme for hybrid ad hoc networks. By
applying the index-based data broadcasting and selective tuning methods, the
infra system performs the major operations related to clustering and routing on
behalf of ad hoc nodes. The simulation result presents that our proposed scheme
shows up to about 46% of performance improvements in comparison with other
schemes.

This paper proposes the real-time stereoscopic conversion method with
adaptable viewing distance by the viewer's eye detection at personal
stereoscopic viewing devices. The distance between a screen and viewer is often
changed by moving a personal display or moving head position. It causes a
visual discomfort and low quality stereoscopy. Our proposed method is divided
into two parts; eye detection part to acquire viewer's eye positions and
stereoscopic generation part in real-time. In the first part, we can measure an
interocular distance of a single viewer by the proposed eye detection method
and also calculate the distance between a screen and a viewer by using the
principle of stereoscopic generation. In the other part, we propose an
efficient motion-based approach for conversion from 2D video to stereoscopic
video. The disparity between left image and right image is adaptively adjusted
by viewer's interocular distance. Adaptation time for a 3D immersion during 3D
stereoscopic viewing is remarkably reduced and stereoscopy is personally
optimized. Therefore, our proposed system can offer optimized stereoscopic
conversion and more freedom of viewer's head considering the distance between a
screen and a viewer through the proposed eye detection.

SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) is a new IETF transport protocol
over the IP network. Transport protocol is responsible for reliable delivery of
a message form a host to another host. We implemented an efficient file
transfer system using the SCTP multiple file transfer and modified STCP
congestion control mechanism for heterogeneous ubiquitous environment to
improve end-to-end FTP efficiency. The result shows that proposed system
reduces transmission latency for huge data and improves the performance.

In order to improve the quality of embedded software by finding obstacles
unanticipated by software specifications, this paper describes a requirement
analysis method based on an Information Flow Diagram and experiments using this
method, with discussion. Recently, embedded software has become more
large-scale and complicated while the development cycle of the software has
typically been shortened. This industry trend compromises the quality of
embedded software. In order to improve the quality of the software, unexpected
obstacles must be carefully analyzed in the specification and design phases. We
propose a diagram-based analysis method to answer this need, and have performed
an experiment using the analysis method with an actual product. The results of
the experiment made it clear that 1) Novice engineers can construct an
Information Flow Diagram under the lead of expert engineers; and 2) The methods
by which experts lead novice engineers in the analysis of unexpected obstacles
require further refinement.

In this research, we have built a system for network administrators that
visualize the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing activities of network users. This
system monitors network traffic and discerns traffic features using traffic
mining. This system visualizes the P2P file sharing traffic activities of an
organization by making the processing object not an individual user but a user
group. The network administrator can comprehend the P2P sharing activities of
the organization by referring to the map. This system extracts a traffic
feature from captured IP packets that the users communicated. Afterwards this
system creates a traffic model. The features of the traffic model are
emphasized by weighting. After that, the traffic model is visualized by a
Self-Organizing Map. The network administrator is assisted in understanding
users' P2P file sharing communication behavior by this feature map. The
administrator can then respond to the situation. As a result, we think we can
assist the monitoring operation and network administration.

To deal with the problem of extracting rules from the information table, a
new method was studied and proposed. First, define discernible vector and its
addition rule by the indiscernible relation in rough set. Second, scan
discernible vectors just only one time by the discernible vector addition rule
in order to obtain the core attribute set and the important attributes. Then
reduce attribute and attribute value by deleting redundant attributes and
attribute values respectively. Finally, a concise rule set was obtained. The
illustration and experiment results indicate that the method is effective and
efficient for rule extraction.

The Activation Mechanism for Dynamically Generated Procedures in Hyperlogo

The higher-order programming is one of the attractive and powerful ways of
expressing our algorithmic/procedural methods of solving in many application
fields. It represents our idea in program form naturally. The authors have
studied and implemented the function of handling higher-order programming
paradigm in Hyperlogo language system. The handling functions are: to make
procedure closures, to handle procedure closures in the same way as numerical
value and character strings, and to activate generated procedure closures. The
third point of the above functions is focused mainly in this paper. Two ways of
activating closures in Hyperlogo are presented: (1) add a name to generated
closure, and call it up by its name as the need arises, (2) use the assistant
procedure which activates a target procedure. The procedure activate is
introduced to acquire the function.

Part V: Advanced Interaction Technologies and Techniques

Our aim is to implement a mind-reading capability in machines and artifacts.
We give a formulation of mind-reading applicable to machines, emphasizing the
importance of a human stance to a machine in mind-reading. Next we demonstrate
how the stance a human takes can modify the recognition of intention in an
object/agent, taking as examples experiments conducted by us, i.e., a moving
box experiment, eye-contact robot, gaze-game experiment, and three-card-game
experiment. To realize a human-machine communication based on mind-reading, it
is essential that a human takes an intentional stance to the machine. We have
to use signs of intentionality to trick a human to take an intentional stance.
Shared attention is shown to work as a sign of intentionality.

Human beings are fascinating creatures. Their behavior and appearance cannot
be compared with any other living organism in the world. They have two distinct
features with compared to any other living being; unique physical nature and
emotions / feelings. Anybody who studies on humans or trying to construct human
like machines should consider these two vital facts. When robots are
interacting with humans and other objects, they certainly have a safe distance
between them and the object. But how can this distance be optimized when
interacting with humans; will there be any advantages over achieving this; will
it help to improve the condition of robots; can it be a mere constant distance;
how will the humans react, are some questions arosed. In order to "humanize"
robots, they (robots) should also have certain understating of such emotions
that we, humans have. In this research project, authors are trying to "teach"
one such human understanding, commonly known as "personal space" to autonomous
mobile robots.

The Use of Dynamic Display to Improve Reading Comprehension for the Small
Screen of a Wrist Watch

This study explored the feasibility of displaying dynamic Chinese text on
the screen of a wrist watch. Three design factors (i.e., dynamic display,
presentation method, and speed) were examined to investigate their effects on
users' reading comprehension under two different conditions of task types. The
results of this study indicated the following: (1) There was no significant
difference between leading display and RSVP in both single- and dual-task
conditions; (2) Presentation method was a significant factor. The participant's
reading comprehension was significantly better with the word-by-word format
than with the character-by-character one in both single- and dual-task
conditions; (3) The participant's reading comprehension was not significantly
different among the three different speed settings in the single-task
condition. However, participants had significantly higher reading comprehension
scores under the slower speed settings of 150 and 250 cpm than under the faster
speed setting of 350 cpm in the dual-task condition.

Walking with someone or guiding them to a destination is a simple task that
humans do everyday. However, while almost any mobile robot can navigate to a
given point while a human walks behind it, these robots do not take into
consideration whether the human is following along properly. Our research
involves the use of a wireless sensor network for navigation of a guidance
robot and a vision-based tracking system for human awareness. The network
creates a virtual directional field that provides a directional imperative to
the robot, and the vision system allows it to detect if a following human has
strayed. We also present a demonstration of our system in a real world
application.

Keywords: Human-aware; guidance; tracking; wireless sensor network

A Comparative Study of Brain Activities Engaged in Interface Operations by
Means of NIRS Trajectory Map

This paper studies an elemental human action, hand up-down, and selective
button operations, by means of NIRS. In the analysis, we pay attention to NIRS
trajectory and the total Hb changes. Our results provided empirical support for
the hypothesis that the trajectory of positive inclination indicates brain
location actively contributing the task, and negative inclination is the brain
locations out of contribution. The locations positively contributing to the
task are found most intensively in right and left forebrain area but in middle
part of left brain looks less contributing to the task.

This paper presents an interactive design project of a remote clinical robot
for ophthalmology, for use in support of telemedicine. The project is a case
study of finding the best organizational structure of a Graphical User
Interface (GUI) and Solid User Interface (SUI) in the age of ubiquitous
computing. At the early stage of design, we carried out usability tests with
paper-based prototypes and obtained requirements from ophthalmologists. Results
showed that paper prototyping is applicable for GUI- and SUI-combined products,
even they have manual control input and continuously changing visual feedback.
We examine lessons learned from the design process and designed product.

The human's facial expression plays an important role as media that visually
transmit feelings and the intention. To express the facial expression freely,
the action of muscles of facial expression forms the expression is very
important. "Facial expression training" is recently paid to attention, and is a
training of the face to make a good facial expression. There is a training
method by moving the expression muscle of the face. One of the purposes to
train the facial expression is to achieve your own ideal facial expression. In
this study, it aims at a support of the effective process for facial expression
training to achieve the target expression using computer, as a self training
system. And, an interface for users to select a target facial expression and a
whole development of an effective expression training system is proposed, as a
first step toward an effective facial expression training system.

As robots become more intelligent and their application fields continue to
grow, the decisions and interaction of robots that share work domains with
humans become increasingly important. Traditional robots have received only
simple commands, and humans' roles have been limited to supervisor. However,
for successive task performance, robots' decision making should be approached
via collaboration between the human and robot. Interaction also should be
regarded as an issue closely associated with joint work plans rather than a
simple function. Interaction between the human and robot, moreover, should be
systemized in order to decrease the workload of the human and maximize user
satisfaction. Accordingly, we developed several cognitive models: a task model,
truth-maintenance model, interaction model, and intention rule-base. These
models can manage and initiate the interactions based on their tasks and modify
robot's activities by using the result of the interaction. We demonstrated the
adaptability and usability of the developed models by applying them to the
home-service robot, T-Rot.

In this paper, A stereoscopic display system using a rotary disk type beam
shutter and two beam projectors is proposed. It is a kind of active
stereoscopic display and can be easily converted from a passive stereoscopic
system using polarizing filters. If it is possible to synchronize the
revolution speed of the beam shutter with the integer multiple of the scanning
frequency of the beam projectors, we can obtain a comparable performance with
our system to an active stereoscopic system using one expensive high
performance beam projector. Further, if we rotate the beam shutter at
sufficiently high revolution speed, our active stereoscopic system works
regardless of synchronization and thus the system is much easier to implement.

We clarify internal timing control mechanism in a synchronization tapping
task. Synchronization error (SE) was directly controlled within 450-1800 ms of
the inter stimulus-onset interval (ISI) with our experimental method. Two types
of internal phase correction mechanism became evident. The first showed a
strong negative correlation between SE change and change in inter tap-onset
interval (ITI), suggesting a simple negative feedback mechanism. This
correlation was observed under all ISI conditions. The second type showed a
larger response with a low negative correlation and was observed only with long
(1200-1800 ms) ISIs. Only the second mechanism was inhibited in a dual task
condition. These results suggest that there are two types of internal timing
mechanism.

We examined brain activation in the frontal cortex during the contents
understanding of comic stories with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The
present results showed that the left prefrontal lobe region is activated when
people actively try to understand the comic stories and to memorize their
contents for reporting in the future. The activated area could overlap with or
be around Broca's area. We discussed how to apply this brain activation related
to human understanding to evaluation of contents presented in the human-machine
interfaces.

Using NIRS, we investigated brain activity in subjects searching for target
characters in given text. Visual stimuli consisted of two different contrasts:
positive and negative. Both stimuli were displayed for 30 sec on a cathode-ray
tube (CRT: 21 inches). The subjects were instructed to watch a visual display
on the CRT. This display included text without meaning. When target characters
were detected, subjects were instructed to perform three tasks: (1) count the
number of target characters by visual observation, (2) tap a button with the
thumb and fingers of their left hand carefully and as fast as possible and (3)
operate a mobile phone.

Intelligent robots can obtain environmental information by processing sensor
signals, understand contextual information, and perform necessary tasks
autonomously. They can also perform tasks directed by commands from a user.
They can be used for housekeeping, entertaining, and educational purposes. In
order to use intelligent robots efficiently, a convenient user interface is
needed to control them. In this study, we analyze how to organize such a user
interface according to the function and level of autonomy of intelligent robots
and develop a user interface for controlling them remotely via a PDA (Personal
Digital Assistant) or mobile phone.

This paper discusses development of a control system for home robots. When a
user requests a user interface for home robot, the home robot sends this
robot's user interface to the user's PDA. Then, the robot can be efficiently
controlled from this user interface on the PDA. The home server distributes the
service of robots, and manages the transmission of service interface modules.
When this procedure is used, home network traffic is reduced, and the user can
simply access a service of a robot.

The increasing capabilities of experimental household robot platforms
require more and more sophisticated methods of interaction. While there are
many developments in all directions of Human-Machine-Interaction, the
integration and combination of several modalities into one robot system require
some effort. To ease the development of applications supporting several types
of interaction, Fraunhofer IPA has developed a framework named "Go". Within
this framework we have integrated different kinds of interaction methods into
one robot platform "Care-O-bot 3", a mobile service robot for accomplishing
daily tasks. This framework and its interaction methods are presented here.

To quantitatively clarify the cognitive mechanism of KANSEI information
conveyed by body movement, we conducted evaluation experiments and movement
analysis by optical motion capture. We attempted to develop multiple regression
models to investigate the effect of physical movement on subjective evaluation.
The results show the relation between subjective feature of movements and the
physical measurement. Thus, we expect that our research is effective to the
guidance of dancing and acting, because it is possible to paraphrase sensitive
image (KANSEI information) in another word (movement feature) which has strong
relation with physical movement. Furthermore, this relational model which can
replace human sensibility by digital data is useful for human-computer
interaction.

Keywords: Body movement; KANSEI information; Motion capture

A Japanese Text Input Interface Using On-Line Writing-Box-Free Handwriting
Recognition and Kana-to-Kanji Conversion

People often forget how to write Kanji characters even though they are able
to read those characters. If one cannot write a Kanji character, one cannot
input it with current handwriting recognition engines. Therefore, we propose to
combine Kana (phonetic characters) to Kanji conversion with a handwriting
recognition engine. Moreover, we remove writing boxes to write characters one
by one, since they are unnatural for many applications. This is similar to
writing on a plain paper with a pen. When, handwritten characters are
misrecognized, the user corrects them using correction gestures. When the user
cannot write Kanji characters, the user writes in Kana and invokes the
Kana-to-Kanji conversion. In reality, people often write Kana characters
instead of Kanji characters when they cannot write those characters or it takes
more time than writing Kana characters. Kana-to-Kanji conversation is common in
keyboard interface. This paper describes the design of a pen interface by which
the user can write text without writing boxes, correct misrecognitions and
specify Kana-to Kanji conversion. When a user writes Kana characters instead of
Kanji characters, it would be desirable to translate them to Kanji characters
automatically.

This paper describes the tasting robot with an artificial sense of taste.
Its optical tongue examines the taste of food and drink within several seconds
and gives the name as well as its ingredients without crashing them and without
opening paper or plastic packages. It is the integration of infrared (IR)
spectroscopic technologies with pattern recognition technologies. The robot is
the world's first tasting robot which gives advices on the food and on health
issues based on the information gathered. It sees if foods are best to eat or
if they are good for health from the point of the content of sugar and fat. The
robot was first exhibited in EXPO 2005 AICHI, Japan.

This paper describes a concept-based approach for question answering system
in which concept rather than keyword makes an important role on question
analysis, document retrieval, and answer extraction. Our idea is that we can
extract correct answer from various paragraphs with different structures when
we use well-defined concepts because concepts occurred in questions of same
answer type are similar. We defined a concept rule for each answer type. The
concept rule contains core concepts occurred in questions of that answer type.
Question analysis module extracts concepts from user's question and determines
the answer type. Document retrieval module retrieves more relevant documents
using extracted concepts. Answer extraction module extracts a probable answer
from retrieved documents using concepts. Empirical results show that our
concept-based approach can retrieve more relevant documents and extract more
accurate answer than any other conventional approach. Also, our approach has
additional merits that it is language universal model, and can be combined with
arbitrary conventional approaches.

There are needs recently to push information technology beyond the desktop
environment. It is because even decades after the proliferation of information
technology, it still, by large, confine the users in its own domain.
Conventional IT confined users to the desktop and virtual reality technology
confined the users onto specialized devices such as the HMD, large screen
display room, or the CAVE. Our vision is to push for the ubiquity of IT beyond
the mobile cell phone media. This paper discusses several requirements for the
real IT vision. Specifically we are interested in the characteristics of
display technologies that suit our vision. We will describe several key
technologies that have been developed within this requirements, and our most
recent work in this field.

This paper gives an overview of recent projects done at Fraunhofer IAO which
take innovative approaches to the use of non-speech audio in human-computer
interfaces. The examples illustrate the benefits that non-speech sound -- alone
and in combination with other modalities -- can provide for supporting an
effective interaction.

An approach to haptic interaction and simulation of motion and deformation
of elastic object is proposed. In our approach, the motion of an object is
defined by changes of kinetic momentum and angular momentum after impulse force
is applied to each degree of freedom, and the deformation of the object is
defined by a set of temporal deformation patterns after impulse force is
applied to each degree of freedom, which we call extended impulse response
deformation model. The time complexity of computing interaction force is
independent of the complexity of the model. This feature is advantageous for
time-critical applications. Also, the time complexity of computing object
deformation is linearly proportional to the complexity of the model. Through
implementation of a prototype environment and evaluation of its performance,
the feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated.

NIRS trajectory method is proposed to understand brain activities engaged in
mobile device operation. The trajectory is the plot of oxy- and deoxy- Hb
(hemoglobin concentration) data to the Oxy-Deoxy Hb plane. Three basic
trajectories and some complex trajectories are explained. Total brain
activities are represented by a set of NIRS trajectories derived from NIRS
channels located on the head surface. Trajectory maps of text entry to mobile
phone are shown. The trajectory map increases its complexity with the increase
of work task complexity, which we defined by normal and reverse order hiragana
and kanji conversion entry of Japanese text. The results suggest the right
brain is taking dominant roles in text and other finger activities. NIRS
trajectory method can be applied further to find centers of brain activities
located on the surface area of the brain. Kindly use color version in CD-ROM
for better understanding of this paper.

The electroencephalogram signals of steady-state visual evoked potentials
were recorded for three subjects in immersive virtual environment. A machine
learning technique of support vector machine with single trial EEG data for 1.0
seconds resulted in 92.1% of averaged recognition rate in selecting a virtual
button among two. The online demonstrations in CAVE showed good performance in
position control of a simple 3D object.

The embodied communication system for mind connection (E-COSMIC) has been
developed by applying the entrainment mechanism of the embodied rhythms of
nodding and body movements to physical robots and CG characters. E-COSMIC
comprises an embodied virtual communication system for human interaction
analysis by synthesis and a speech-driven embodied interaction system for
supporting essential human interaction and communication based on the analysis
that uses the embodied virtual communication system. Human-entrained embodied
interaction and communication technology for an advanced media society is
introduced through some applications of E-COSMIC.

InterRobot is an embodied interaction robot driven by InterRobot technology
(iRT) in order to make communicative motions and actions based only on speech
input. In this paper, the concept of an embodied image telecasting method is
proposed for activating embodied interaction and communication via such a
robot. The prototype systems are developed: a new InterRobot equipped with a
camera and a projector, and an embodied visual effect on telecasted images. The
sensory evaluation demonstrates that the visual effect is effective for
realizing presence and a sense of unity.